


Here In Me

by NoirRosaleen



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Gen, Originally Posted on LiveJournal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-31
Updated: 2012-07-31
Packaged: 2017-12-09 21:36:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/778238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoirRosaleen/pseuds/NoirRosaleen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To say that John and Sherlock got by without one another would be an overstatement.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here In Me

To say that John got by without Sherlock would be an overstatement. He spent one terrible day at the flat after Sherlock fell, motionless in his chair looking out at the rain. Despite the cold, he rested bare feet on the carpet because for once he didn't have to worry about stepping on bits of god-knows-what; a hollow pleasure. The emptiness of the flat reminded him far, far too much of his old bedsit after Afghanistan. The next day he got a hotel, and eventually a different, one-room flat became - well, not his home, but where he lived.

It hit him at the oddest times: in line for the chip-and-pin machine, walking through London's crowds, looking up at the stars, in his local. In a flash, the ache of the empty space at his side where Sherlock used to be would clench in his gut like a fist, and it would be all he could do to not double over and keen at his loss. Greg saw it once, out for pints a few months after. The TV above the bar was changing through channels and briefly came across an ad for a planetarium. The faintest wince flitted across John's face, as clear as a shout to his friend. "You all right?"

"What?" John shook his head a bit. "Yea, fine, fine. Whose round is it, mine?"

Greg resisted the urge to clap John on the shoulder."You know...I don't know if it'd help, but we've a case we could use a doctor's opinion on."

John's face shuttered. "I'm not him, Greg."

"I know you're not, I just...never mind. Another bitter?"

That night, in the dark, John pulled the covers over his head and cried almost silently, sobs shaking his slight frame. He bit his fist to stop the anguished noises grief and anger tried to force from his throat as the day at the graveyard stood out hard in his mind. _"Just for me, just...stop it. STOP this!"_

After awhile, though, Greg's request started niggling at John. A month and a half later, when Greg had started to look harried, John gave in. The feeling of the Sherlock-shaped hole at his side was more painful at first, but then it became helpful. John could almost see the swirling coat as his friend would have dashed about, and he got better at looking for the unusual. Sherlock's voice was at his ear, half-imagined - "Why would they have lit the fireplace? This room is decorated almost completely in pastels that show no soot stains, they clearly don't use it on a regular basis" - and John's hunches, as he called them, started to help.

In time Greg started calling John on the stranger cases, and John would come, bringing his friend's ghost with him. Nobody would compare him to Sherlock, of course, but in a way, John could feel his friend inside, never truly dead as long as the cases continued. After awhile, he even stopped feeling so alone.

~~~~~

To say that Sherlock got by without John would be an overstatement. When he got caught up in something brilliant, he would still turn to the place where John should be to show him something, and would even sometimes get a sentence or two out before remembering that John was not there, he was in London, safely ignorant of Sherlock's continued existence. When he missed his friend too much, he would pester Mycroft for access to the CCTV outside John's new flat, hungrily watching the beloved form about daily life.

Molly told him, via email, when John had started showing up to the morgue. It made her simply uncomfortable, having to pretend that she had nothing to do with Sherlock's disappearance, but when Sherlock figured out that his friend had picked up where he himself had left off, the swirl of unfamiliar emotion made him vaguely queasy. Eventually he sorted it out - fear for John, and surprise, but above all, a fierce sort of pride, and, yes, love. Not the boring sort everyone had always assumed when they had lived together, it was much more difficult to define, but "love" was the only term that fit.

John's small successes did not surprise Sherlock - he had, after all, lived with one of the greatest observers on earth for some time, he must have picked up something - but each time Sherlock felt a little glow, a sense of still being there, next to his friend. Once he caught a CCTV shot of John, looking slightly up and to one side, smiling; the spot he was looking at was where Sherlock remembered walking next to him. Loyal John, a fixed point in Sherlock's world, something to look forward to once Moriarty's empire was destroyed, a space he could step back into with ease. It only made Sherlock more determined to finish the job and get home, an unstoppable force moving ever toward his goal, the best of him, his heart.

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by Saint Saviour's song "Here In Me". You may enjoy listening to it on YouTube.


End file.
